New Facebook Privacy Settings: Approve Tags, Choose Who Sees Posts, and More

August 23, 2011

7:17 pm

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Facebook announced changes to posting and tagging this afternoon, to be rolled out “in the coming days.”

“You have told us that ‘who can see this?’ could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward,”

…wrote Chris Cox, Facebook’s vice president of product.

The updates center on privacy but also expand options for sharing. Among them:

– Approve tags of you or your content before they appear on your profile. Given these flexible controls, Facebook also decided to allow you to tag anyone, not just friends or pages you like.
– Control whom you share posts with–and change it in previous posts. The somewhat ambiguous sharing option “Everyone” has been renamed “Public.”
– Tag posts with your location, rather than checking in on Facebook Places.
– Click “View profile as…” to see your page as other users see it.
– When removing a tag, submit a request to the poster to remove the photo.

Some observers are teasing Facebook for imitating Google+, but–whatever Facebook’s motives–these updates should be appreciated. As one commenter wrote, “These all sound like POSITIVE changes, not change just for the sake of change.” And if a sparring match between Google+ and Facebook makes them both get better and better, who are we to complain?

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Kira M. Newman is a Tech Cocktail writer interested in the harsh reality of entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and psychology. She is the founder of The Year of Happy and has been traveling around the world interviewing entrepreneurs in Asia, Europe, and North America since 2011. Follow her @kiramnewman or contact kira@tech.co.